Faisal I of Iraq

Faisal bin Hussein (20 May 1883-8 September 1933) was King of Syria in 1920 and King of Iraq from 1921 to 1933. Having taken power after the Arab Revolt of World War I, Faisal was crushed by the French and later became King of Iraq as a puppet of Britain.

Biography
Faisal was of the Hashemite dynasty and son of Hussein bin Ali, and in 1913 represented Jeddah for the parliament of the Ottoman Empire. In 1916, when the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans began, Faisal was the liaison to the United Kingdom and gained the support of Lawrence of Arabia in his war. Lawrence believed that Faisal was the perfect man to rule a postwar Arabia that he had dreamed of, and the two became partners in the rebellion. But in 1918, having left Turkish captivity, Lawrence was disillusioned after rape and torture and led his own renegade army. He took Damascus but the British and Arabs later took it from his renegade army and Lawrence was sent home, useless to the rebels. Faisal was the King of Syria after the war, but the French put down his kingdom and took over Syria and Lebanon, and Faisal would not be king of his lands until the British voted him as the ruler of Iraq in 1921 after a Shiite and Kurdish revolt against them.

Faisal fostered unity between Sunnis and Shiites and tried to introduce diversity by recruiting people of various beliefs and races into his government, but the French and British pressure was too much for him and he remained a pressured ruler. He died in 1933 of arsenic poisoning in Geneva, Switzerland, for a medical checkup.